That's something new. Usually the usenet news server software limits
the number of newsgroups that can be crossposted. Anything posted to
over about 5 groups is usually considered spam. Unless someone has
rewritten INN (again), I don't know of any way to limit cross posting
by specific newsgroups.

This may also explain why you're being restricted: <http://blueworldhosting.com
"I am recovering from a major server failure. Please
contact me at jesse.rehmer@gmail.com until things are
back online."

It makes things easier, as you have to learn how to manually open
needed ports, and configure security within the router and the lan.
It's enabled as a marketing feature. The designers of upnp either
didn't understand the security implications, or didn't care, and it
became a standard feature of most routers, with consumers expecting
it.

There are multiple ways upnp opens up security attacks. Some only affect
certain routers, while others affect any router that has upnp enabled.

For some of the attacks, run a search on "upnp soap attack", without
the quotes.

The basic concept of most of the attacks, is going to a web site
that's been hacked, or is intentionally sending html code to your
browser causing the browser to send a soap attack back to the
router (without any intervention by you), so it's being attacked from
inside the lan, as far as the router can tell. Both the router, and
the browser are working as designed, but the concept is bad. Changing
the router admin password will block some of the attacks, but not all
of them.

Apparently "corporate" routers have it turned off, by default; but
home broadband routers have it turned on by default. Go figure.

Anyway, I couldn't understand UPNP until I looked up port forwarding.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but, let's say your external IP address is
1.2.3.4 but that you have a Playstation on 192.168.1.2 behind your
router. And say that you want port 12345 on your playstation to
"do something" (I'm not sure what).

From what I can gather, port forwarding is the act of you purposefully
going into your router and setting the router up so that if anyone on
the Internet goes to your IP address (1.2.3.4) and that port (12345),
I guess by typing "1.2.3.4:12345", then your router will connect
that person on the Internet to your playstation at 192.168.1.2:12345
as far as I can tell (even if you have a dozen other machines on your
local LAN).

That is, port forwarding seems to be the act of opening up a specific *hole* in your router firewall to a specific machine inside your
local network.

The port forwarding action somehow allows someone from the Internet
to specify a certain machine and port on your local LAN simply by
specifying your external IP address and a particular port:
1.2.3.4:12345 ---> is forwarded to ---> 192.168.1.2:12345

If that's correct, then UPNP is merely the act of doing all that
totally automatically (as far as I can tell).

I'm not sure *how* that's done, but, that's what I understood from
reading about port forwarding and UPNP.

So, I just turned *off* UPNP on my router.

I have no idea what that will do to whatever was being port forwarded
before, which is this list below:

Well, no. If it is restricted to your home network, then it allows your
computer to find the network printer without you having to go through a
bunch of setup. (or for your comptuer to find your refigerator, so when
it needs a snack it can get one without it having to be explicitly set
up). If it automatically opens ports to the outside world that is a bit
dangerous.

More likely it would go for example to 1.2.3.4:25 ( the standard email port) it
would be forwarded to 192.168.1.2:25. or similarly for ssh.

If you mean ensuring that router does not have access to the internet,
that would work, keeping in mind the computer would have to use a
second nic and router, for it's internet access, with upnp disabled,
assuming internet access is wanted for it.

Yes. It is useful to open a port and forward it to a specific computer
within the lan, for example to allow skype to receive incoming calls.
That should be decided and manually configured by the system admin.

The main problem with upnp, is that, while it makes it easier for
people who don't understand how a router works to get things like
skype working, it opens the hole where a malicious website can get
a browser to send the request to the router, to open whatever port
the malicious site wants. For example, ftp. People within a lan may
want to have an ftp server running, with no password required, as
it's only intended to be used by people within the lan. By having
upnp turned on, the malicious site would be able to get access.
There are a lot of other ports that should not be opened to the
general internet, without proper security configurations.

If you have one computer running ftp, sure go ahead and open port
22, and forward it to the appropriate computer, if that's what
you want to do. With upnp, you are no longer have complete control
of what's open.

Not those, but one of the "attackers" was "Ubisoft Entertainment"
which does make the "Assasins Creed" game he plays a lot.

I told him to play games (which he's doing now, without much more
prompting from me) where I just noticed an older "Smurf" attack:
https://i.imgur.com/0WHiS9A.jpg
Which shows up as this error:
[DoS attack: Smurf] attack packets in last 20 sec from ip
[114.254.105.255], Sunday, Dec 20,2015 04:02:28

But, I don't see any more of those original attacks into port
9000. But I'll keep watching the log.

Well if you looked further down the page at the link I provided,
you would have seen quite a few more games, although I do not
see "Assasins Creed".

You will also see on that page that there are quite a few
exploits/trojans being used for this port.

If the port is needed to be opened for this game and for Internet
playing, it would be wise to ensure that your router only forwards
traffic on this port to the IP address assigned to the Playstation.

If somebody has come up with a crack to gain access via 9000 to the
Playstation then you will need to update the latest firmware with
a fix for the crack.

Having uPnP enabled on your router is rather dangerous unless you
have secured all the hosts, which includes devices, not just computers,
eg your ethernet connected refrigerator, your WiFi connected coffee
machine, on your LAN.

Crackers have easily been able, thanks to lax security by people
who just buy and connect these things, to monitor conversations
and/or view household rooms, by accessing baby-monitoring-web-cams.

The first rule of Internet security is deny access to all, and only
open up specific ports as necessary, preferably (but not always
possible) limited to specific incoming IP ranges, and always forwarded
towards specific single local host IPs.

It is telling your that uPnP is active on your router and that
your router has used the uPnP method of automatically connecting
your playstation port 9000 (just UDP) to the router's incoming/outgoing
port 9000 port, and similarly for your Android cellphone for
2550 (both TCP and UDP), and your PC for 64941 (just UDP).

Port 2550 may be related to Active Directory Authentication.

Without manually setting up the appropriate port forwarding, the
services which use these ports may have problems talking to
whoever on the Internet.

The usual way port opening on a router is set up, is that if a local
host, on the LAN side of the router, initiates a connection to an
external site on a particular port, then that port stays open in order
to get the remote response.

If a remote site, on the WAN side of the router, initiates a connection
on a port which the router has not opened due to a host trying
to talk outbound, then that port stays closed and the incoming
message is not received.

The two most important thing with respect to your router are these:

(1) Always set a strong password for Admin and unless it is absolutely
needed, turn off external administrative access, which has been
the most common way that routers have been compromised.

(2) Regularly check that you have the latest firmware installed to
ensure that bugs and security holes (which the manufacturer of
the router cares to do something about) get fixed.

With regard to enabling uPnP, have a read of this article to see
why uPnP enabled is risky, and check to see if your router is affected
(certain Netgear models did have a real vulnerability in the past).